2018: Charity’s empty space odyssey

USING empty shops and businesses for temporary community spaces can save developers a fortune and invigorate neighbourhoods suffering from planning blight, according to a charity that specialises in reusing boarded-up buildings.

The people behind Space Generators, who have a long and successful history of turning disused buildings into temporary homes and community areas, are now looking to work in partnership with private developers and the Town Hall to maximise the untapped potential of high streets.

Pete Phoenix, a housing activist and Space Generators trustee, says that with some resource­fulness unused spaces can be turned into a genuine asset for neighbourhoods and high streets blighted by boarded-up buildings.

He said: “Many groups are crying out for space to use, and we can help them.”

He is speaking with councils and private property developers to show how using the charity can be rewarding for all concerned.

Space Generators take on a site and sign a “meanwhile” lease – a legally binding contract supported by the Greater London Authority (GLA) which means they will move out after being given a month’s notice so any redevelopment plans are not affected.

They have a team who organise maintenance, set up an events diary, run the administration and provide owners with a vastly reduced bill for business rates and security.

Space Generators are a not-for-profit organisation and create an income to cover costs – the owner gets a reduction of 80-100 per cent off business rates. Mr Phoenix said: “You will have a building that is a thriving cultural hub.

We have hundreds of community groups with workshops ranging from music technology to IT training, theatre, yoga, tango classes, English/ Spanish language exchanges, singing groups, through to knitting circles.”

He cites the case of Camden High Street, which has 23 properties currently empty, as to how Space Generators can offer a solution.

Mr Phoenix said: “Owners will be paying business rates or employ­ing ‘live-in guardians’ for large fees and very few rights for the temporary tenant.

Take the Black Cap, for example – it’s a prime site on the High Street. It has been closed for some time and we could use it as a resource and offer space to the LGBT community until its owners reopen it.”

Above all, it is a way of dealing with a horrendous waste of shared infrastruc­ture, says Mr Phoenix.

He added: “We offer caretaking services with some maintenance and no security costs.You find that some owners will be paying up to £3,000 a week just to keep a building empty.

“Instead, you could house six people for an interim period and have a community centre to be proud of.

“It creates a relationship between the developer and the neighbourhood they are building in. On an economic level, it is bad for a high street to have shops boarded up.”

Space Generators have collaborated with the Church of England in Kentish Town Road for three years, had a long-running and productive relationship with the JW3 centre in Finchley Road, and looked after St George’s Theatre on Tufnell Park Road.

Mr Phoenix has been speaking with members of the GLA and Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan over the possibility of bringing in new rules regarding empty properties.

They can sign a lease for as little as six months and up to two or three years, depending on the developer’s plans.

Mr Phoenix added: “These buildings are a hugely valuable resource that is currently being wasted – and we have an answer.”

Pressure mounts on Zuckerberg to face data breach concerns

Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is facing intensified calls to appear in person at investigations into the social network's conduct.

His company has been accused of failing to properly inform users that their profile information may have been obtained and kept by Cambridge Analytica, a data firm widely-credited with helping Donald Trump win the 2016 US presidential election.

Facebook said on Friday it had blocked Cambridge Analytica from Facebook while it investigated claims the London-based firm did not, as promised, delete data that was allegedly obtained using methods that were in violation of Facebook's policies.

Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook deny any wrongdoing.

Despite pledging that in 2018 he would "fix" his company, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has managed to avoid engaging with the site's growing number of critics - instead sending lawyers or policy bosses to various committee hearings.

The 33-year-old's recent remarks on some of Facebook's controversies have been communicated in the relatively safe space of a blog post or video message published on his Facebook page.

The Velvet Revolution Tour 1994 headed off from the Rainbow Centre Kentish town busses in a convoy to challenge a government that made music illegal........

any Govt that makes music illegal deserves to fall as John Majors gov did, but leaving us with a draconian bill that confiscated and crushed travellers vehicles if they found more than 6 vehicles on a site.

Made squatting harder and reduced our civil liberties and rights to protest. If you do not defend your rights then they will be lost, in fact most of our rights have come from the campaigning and struggling of many movements of people to whom we owe our liberty. Stand up for your rights, don't let the gov use injunctions to remove your last rights to protest...2018....

Twitter is stopping disabled activists from fighting for their human rights. Everyone should know about this.

Spread the word:

Six key lessons in edtech

Learn from Fujitsu's survey of education IT leaders. See how edtech with Intel® can help.

Learn More

Promoted by Fujitsu

Twitter is apparently restricting the accounts of disability rights campaigners. And the impact this has had on them cannot be overstated.

Silencing dissent?

As I’ve beendocumenting, four members of the campaign group Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) have been subject to apparent enforcement action by Twitter against their accounts. This is more commonly known as “shadowbanning“. While the existence of shadowbanning has been hotly debated, what is clear is that, for nearly seven days, Twitter seemed to restrict the accounts of Nicola Jeffery (for transparency, my girlfriend), Paula Peters, Keith Walker and Bob Ellard. It did this by stopping their followers seeing their tweets and replies in notifications and on news feeds; stopping their accounts coming up on searches or in hashtag threads; and stopping people they tagged in tweets from seeing that they had been tagged.

Thursday, 8 March 2018

The Leviticus (formerly Exodus) Collective are a Luton based Sound System and Social Movement who see ‘Leaving Babylon’ as re-building our community on the principles of oneness, sharing and co-operation, instead of those of greed, competition and hoarding which underpin the ‘Babylon System’.

So we re-claim disused lands and properties in our town to create our own tribal dances, free festivals, workplaces and homes...building an alternative ‘way of life’ right here in Luton.

So if you are into spiritual change making in your community, come join us and many others who are doing the same thing all over the world...the Movement of JAH People

Support Phoenix's Projects and networking.

Total Pageviews

About Me

Phoenix has been active in the environmental cause for over 20 years.Since 1992 when the first Rainbow Centres were set up as a direct action for change after the Rio Earth Summit..From Twyford Down and the early road protests,to two decades of squatted community projects.Networking on the Frontlines of change.